Umayalpuram K Sivaraman is an eminent musician associated with which of the following musical instruments?

Correct — C. Umayalpuram K Sivaraman is a mridangam player, a percussionist of the Carnatic tradition, which is the instrument option (c) names.

The mridangam is the principal percussion instrument of a Carnatic concert: a barrel-shaped drum with two playing faces on one body, held horizontally and played with both hands, one head tuned high and the other low.

The name itself places him. Prefixing an artist's town or village — Umayalpuram is in Tamil Nadu — is a Carnatic naming convention.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Dhol — The dhol is a north Indian and Punjabi barrel drum played with sticks, heard at weddings and in bhangra. It has no place in a Carnatic concert.
• (b)
  Sitar — The sitar is a plucked Hindustani string instrument, not a drum at all. Its famous names are Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan.
• (d)
  Guitar — The guitar is a western instrument, and although some Carnatic musicians have adapted it, Sivaraman is a percussionist. What he plays is a drum.

Carnatic percussion is a small, learnable set. The mridangam leads it, and a full concert may add the ghatam, a clay pot, the kanjira, a small frame drum, and the morsing, a jew's harp.

The Hindustani counterpart is the tabla, which is a pair of separate drums, where the mridangam is one body with two faces.

The form here is a single pairing — the artist and the instrument — so learn musicians as pairs rather than as biographies.

Key facts

• The mridangam is the main percussion instrument of Carnatic music, a two-headed barrel drum played with the hands.
• Umayalpuram K Sivaraman is a mridangam player in the Carnatic tradition.
• Ghatam, kanjira and morsing are the other percussion instruments of a Carnatic concert.
• The tabla, a pair of drums, is the Hindustani counterpart of the mridangam.

Common traps

• Reading a south Indian name as a Hindustani string player and choosing sitar.
• Confusing the mridangam with the khol, also called mridanga, used in eastern devotional music.

No directly related past PYQ was found.